I did the reporter thing, and asked Tim Kaine, at a campaign event in Waynesboro on Saturday, about how he had originally been scheduled to debate Hung Cao in front of the Virginia Bar Association yesterday, instead of stumping in the Valley, when it occurred to me, as Kaine was answering, why am I asking Kaine about this?
Kaine is the frontrunner, leading by double-digits in the polls; he doesn’t need to engage with Cao, whose only political experience is losing a very winnable congressional race two years ago.
Cao needs as many opportunities to stand on a stage with Kaine, a former lieutenant governor, governor, Democratic National Committee chair, vice-presidential candidate, and two-term United States senator, as he can get.
If this Cao guy wants to ghost invites to debate Kaine like he did back in the Republican Senate primary, that’s on him.
But still, I asked, and Kaine, after meeting with voters at Basic City Beer Co. in Waynesboro, answered.
“This debate, this is the traditional start. Everybody does this debate. I mean, I did it for my governor’s race, I did it for both Senate races, and now, he did not say no, he just refused to respond, right? And we’re hearing the same thing about the next debate. He’s just refusing to respond. He’s afraid to face Virginia voters and answer questions,” Kaine said.
Related: Tim Kaine, unlike that Republican guy, doesn’t think rural Virginia is ‘podunk’
One of the digs at Cao coming from the Democratic side is that he doesn’t seem to want to leave his Northern Virginia bubble, but he actually did take up one invite to speak – delivering brief remarks to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week.
You might get the impression that Cao and his team seem to think that all they need to do to pull the upset in November is talk to the MAGAs.
That, or Cao’s heart really isn’t in actually running, but rather, getting on TV, to set up his post-blowout loss career as a pundit on Fox News and their red-headed stepbrothers on the broadcast far-right.
It’s the second one, almost certainly.
When you think about it that way, then, it makes total sense for Cao to ghost the debate invites.
“He doesn’t want to answer questions about why he supports a national legislation that could ban abortion, IVF and contraception,” Kaine said. “He doesn’t want to answer questions about why Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid should be put in the chopping block every five years. He doesn’t want to answer questions about, you know, why he thinks Jan. 6 protesters should be compensated. I mean, there’s a whole series of things where he’s afraid of facing Virginia voters and answering their questions.”
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Chris Graham
